NEON INDIAN - Era Extraña

"Era Extraña" thus arrives fully equipped to best assemble everything absorbed and produced so far. Palomo's return, long awaited, comes a few months after the whole chillwave/hypnagogic crew resurfaced, mostly from the States and in the most varied forms, forcing us to inevitably draw some first conclusions about the substance of a phenomenon that was localized and defined only with considerable difficulty toward the end of the decade just gone by.

Having reshaped his dreamy synth digressions, the young Texan tries in some way to pursue a "pop" song form with much sharper edges, zigzagging through his childlike microcosm of electronic flourishes, at times even with greater polish. This is where the arduous task comes in of "blurring" the very nature of the reference sounds/samples (strictly Eighties space-age video games and the analog virtuosity of the era) with a structure that is at times more organized and less impulsive (take for example the single "Arcade Fire"), in a desperate attempt to leave intact the magical aura that hung over the debut's wild sonic setup, comparable, indeed, to a hypnagogic hallucination.

Setting aside the three short and almost insignificant instrumental interludes ("Heart: Attack", "Heart: Decay" and "Heart: Release"), on “Era Extraña” Palomo keeps intermittently pushing his irritating fusion, nailing the right groove and arrangement only on the magnetic space-ballad "Fallout", polishing up what could pass for a leftover b-side from his debut ("Polish Girl"), and leaning too hard on irreverent little tunes and fleeting flourishes ("Hex Girfriend"). This time the kid lacks that raw spark and the illuminating mnemonic trace to color with synths. The bland melancholic construct of "Halogen (I Could Be A Shadow)" is glaring proof of this, just as the liquid, alienated pulses of "Future Sick" leave no trace as they pass by.